Know Your Enemy: The Social Dynamics of Hacking

The whitepaper was released on May 29th 2012. You can download the full paper from the link below.

Paper Abstract

Though most information security research focuses on current threats, tools, and techniques to defeat attacks, it is vital to recognize and understand the humans behind attacks. Individual attackers have various skills, motives, and social relationships that shape their actions and the resources they target. In this paper we will explore the distribution of skill in the global hacker community, the influence of on and off-line social relationships, motivations across attackers, and the near-future of threats to improve our understanding of the hacker and attacker community.